Continuing my look at notable 2024 films, today I’m covering the Dramas.

A few of these nearly cracked my top ten, including writer-director Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain. The fact that this movie might have just as easily fallen into the Comedy category is a testament to his excellent screenplay, which is alternately hilarious and touching.

A Real Pain follows two cousins who were once very close but have become estranged as their lives moved in different directions. They reunite to visit their recently deceased grandmother’s childhood home during a Holocaust tour through Poland. Eisenberg’s David is painfully reserved while Kieran Culkin’s Benji is an unpredictable extrovert.

The film gets a lot of mileage out of exploring the way these two personality types frustrate and reward each other. This is a lovely character study and a real feather in the cap of Eisenberg as a filmmaker.

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